So when Georgia's “progressive” democratic gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, tweeted on June 23rd, “Law enforcement are often paid less than a living wage, and that is wrong,” it should come as no surprise. The absurd claims of underpayment in a sad attempt to align cops with workers serves as another example of the typical campaign strategy of the Democratic Party — punch left and move right. Abrams’ tweets comes after her opponent, incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp, released a targeted ad accusing her of supporting grassroots “defunding the police” campaigns. Abrams, of course, doubled down on her centrist-right politics insisting she has never advocated for defunding law enforcement.
There’s a lot of confusion around Abrams because of her impressive ability to wield progressive messaging in order to move up the political ladder in furtherance of her career goals. Yet the actual political moves Abrams has made are a clear reminder that being Black does not make one inherently progressive. One does not move from tax lawyer to Democratic leader in the Georgia House to two gubernatorial races without making concessions. For instance, although grassroots Black- led organizations did the heavy lifting on changing the voting demographics in Georgia, Michael Bloomberg’s $5 million donation to the Fair Fight Political Action Committee platformed her as the woman who turned Georgia ‘purple.’ The misdirected investment in securing democratic wins in the state made it easy to dismiss the criticisms of what it meant for Abrams to cut deals with the man that criminalized Black communities through “Stop and Frisk” and other mechanisms. Just as the criticisms of her recent tweets advocating for the basic welfare of police officers will be dismissed because we have once again arrived at, “the most important elections of our lives.”
Abrams lied. Police officers, on average, are not underpaid. The national median annual wage for police and detectives was $66,020 in May 2021. Furthermore, in her very own state, there are efforts to build Cop City ,
a $90 million police-training facility south of Atlanta. Abrams has yet
to speak on this deforestation effort being pushed through with a
completely undemocratic process. While expressing empathy for cops in a
state where Black people are under tremendous economic pressure, with
the the second highest inflation
rate in 2022, suffering from brutal police abuse, not much has been
said by Abrams about The Atlanta Police Foundation, the main force
behind cop city, providing
free housing for cops throughout Atlanta while workers maneuver through
surviving gentrification. When she insists that alongside increased
wages, she will “develop guidelines for police department policies that
govern community relations and transparency,” she is merely repeating a proven fallacy that increasing funding for police will transform into reforming the institution of policing.
-- Erica Caines, "Punch Left Move Right: Stacey Abrams and the Democratic Party Shuffle" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).